How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.
Voltaire
31
I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.
Voltaire
32
I have only ever made one prayer to God, a very short one: O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.
Voltaire
33
I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.
Voltaire
34
I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.
Voltaire
35
If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.
Voltaire
36
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
Voltaire
37
If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.
Voltaire
38
If there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him.
Voltaire
In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.
Voltaire
41
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
Voltaire
42
In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.
Voltaire
43
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
Voltaire
44
Injustice in the end produces independence.
Voltaire
45
Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?
Voltaire
46
It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
Voltaire
47
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
Voltaire
48
It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.
Voltaire
49
It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.
Voltaire
50
It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.
Voltaire
51
It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.
Voltaire
52
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
Voltaire
53
It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.
Voltaire
54
Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
Voltaire
55
Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.
Voltaire
56
Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.
Voltaire
57
Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same.
Voltaire
58
Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.
Voltaire
59
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
Voltaire
60
Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.
Voltaire
61
Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.
Voltaire
62
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.
Voltaire
Nature has always had more force than education.
Voltaire
65
Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.
Voltaire
66
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
Voltaire
67
Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.
Voltaire
68
Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.
Voltaire
69
Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.
Voltaire
70
One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.
Voltaire
71
Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.
Voltaire
72
Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.
Voltaire
73
Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.
Voltaire
74
Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.
Voltaire
75
Society therefore is an ancient as the world.
Voltaire
76
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.
Voltaire
The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.
Voltaire
82
The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.
Voltaire
83
The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.
Voltaire
84
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
Voltaire
85
The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.
Voltaire
86
The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.
Voltaire
87
The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.
Voltaire
88
The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
Voltaire
89
The secret of being a bore... is to tell everything.
Voltaire
90
The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.
Voltaire
91
The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.
Voltaire
92
The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.
Voltaire
93
There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
Voltaire
94
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
Voltaire
95
This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.
Voltaire
96
Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.
Voltaire
97
To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.
Voltaire
98
To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.
Voltaire
99
To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.
Voltaire
100
Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.
Voltaire
We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.
Voltaire
103
Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels.
Voltaire
104
What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.
Voltaire
105
When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.
Voltaire
106
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
Voltaire
107
You see many stars at night in the sky but find them not when the sun rises; can you say that there are no stars in the heaven of day? So, O man! because you behold not God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.
Voltaire
